Too early to worry about Teixeira

Teixeira has battled slow starts in April his entire career. He has hit twenty less homers in April than in any other month on the calendar. Historically, Mark Teixeira has a .767 OPS if you combine all his Aprils. His lowest other month is .899. Unfortunately, the first baseman has been through this before. His history was somewhat forgotten because last season, Teixeira had an OPS of .941 in April. It was his best month of the season (though he hit ten homers in May). Perhaps you can build a case of concern in that Teixeira had an OPS of .790 in the second half of last season and hasn’t started this season well. You could logically build a case that Teixeira’s OPS has declined for in each of his seasons in New York after beginning his Yankee career at .948 in 2009.

You could also tie it to the same dip in offense in all of the major leagues from 2009. Perhaps Teixeira is a case in point. But perhaps we should simply give the season a little more time before we start jumping to conclusions. There are some positive signs so far this season. He is striking out less at 12.5 percent compared to last year’s 16.1 percent. His walk rate is up by a percentage point. He has yet to hit an infield pop up, something which has been a problem for him the last two seasons.

William Tasker grew up in Bergenfield, New Jersey but has lived in New England since 1975 and in the far reaches of northern Maine since 1990. Tasker is the author of nine (non-baseball related) books and, besides writing here for three years, has written for his own site at www.passion4baseball.blogspot.com since 2003.